Vehicle computing platforms frequently come equipped with voice recognition interfaces. Such interfaces allow a driver to perform hands-free interactions with the vehicle, freeing the driver to focus maximum attention on the road. If the system is unable to recognize the driver's commands, the driver may manually correct the input to the system through a button or touchscreen interface, potentially causing the driver to be distracted and lose focus on the road.
Voice recognition is typically a probabilistic effort whereby input speech is compared against a grammar for matches. High quality matches may result in the system identifying the requested services, while low quality matches may cause voice commands to be rejected or misinterpreted. In general, vehicles may use recognition systems at least initially tuned to provide good results on average, resulting in positive experiences for the maximum number of new users. If a user has an accent or unusual mannerisms, however, match quality may be reduced. Moreover, as voice command input to a vehicle may be relatively infrequent, it may take a significant time for a vehicle to learn a user's speech patterns.
U.S. Patent Application 2010/0185445 generally relates to a machine, system and method for user-guided teaching and modifications of voice commands and actions to be executed by a conversational learning system. The machine includes a system bus for communicating data and control signals received from the conversational learning system to a computer system, a vehicle data and control bus for connecting devices and sensors in the machine, a bridge module for connecting the vehicle data and control bus to the system bus, machine subsystems coupled to the vehicle data and control bus having a respective user interface for receiving a voice command or input signal from a user, a memory coupled to the system bus for storing action command sequences learned for a new voice command and a processing unit coupled to the system bus for automatically executing the action command sequences learned when the new voice command is spoken.